YouTube has suddenly stopped working in Russia. Meduza’s readers describe how they’re handling the loss of the world’s most popular video streaming service.

For more than a week now, the Russian authorities have been throttling YouTube playback nationwide. Officials have attributed the slowdown to the supposedly failing and neglected servers Google abandoned in Russia when it withdrew from the country after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but evidence shows that the federal agency Roskomnadzor is, in fact, responsible for the sudden access issues. Earlier this week, a source in Russia’s telecom industry told Meduza that the government censor recently decided to reduce YouTube data transfer speeds to 128 kilobits per second on home Internet connections, making it possible to listen to audio but not stream videos except at very low resolutions. Despite these restrictions, however, YouTube’s traffic in Russia held steady. That could change today, however, following reports from across Russia on the morning of August 8 that Google’s streaming service has stopped openly entirely — not only on desktop computers but also on mobile devices. At the time of this writing, it’s still unclear if Russia is now blocking YouTube outright and how long this might last.

Meduza has collected accounts of the YouTube outage from readers in Russia. Below, you can read about how ordinary Russians are dealing with the sudden and total loss of the world’s most popular video streaming service.

Have you had problems accessing YouTube?

Oksana, Moscow region

The problems started on August 1, when YouTube completely stopped loading. I struggled with it for two days, then my husband downloaded a patch from some gaming site to bypass the blocks — and voila! Everything’s working now. I haven’t had any issues on my smartphone so far.

Nikolai, Karelia

Three or four days ago, the site started loading a little slower than usual. Sometimes videos freeze up for several seconds. I almost never choose the video resolution, I just watch them how they are. I use the Firefox browser on a Linus operating system, and sometimes I use the Tor browser, but YouTube has always loaded slowly there.

At around the same time, the app for Current Time TV and Radio Liberty stopped loading. Maybe it’s connected somehow.

Yegor, Moscow

Literally on August 1, I started noticing slowdowns on both my phone and my computer. My provider is MGTS [Moscow City Telephone Network]. The [YouTube] site was loading very slowly, and the resolution stayed at around 240p, 114p, whereas previously I watched everything in the highest resolution available. I used Firefox on my computer and the YouTube app on my phone.

Pavel, St. Petersburg

On August 1–2, videos started loading very slowly. It became practically impossible to watch videos at any resolution. My provider is Rostelecom. It’s the same on my phone and through the app when I’m on Wi-Fi, but if I access it through my Beeline mobile Internet, I don’t have any problems.

Tatyana, Moscow region

I noticed [a slowdown] on the evening of August 1. My provider at home is Teleset. On August 2, I decided to check my access where I work, at one of the region’s research institutes. Same problems. I usually just watch informational videos, not artistic ones, so I keep the resolution on auto. It works fine on my smartphone.

Maksim, Moscow/Moscow region

A couple of days ago, or perhaps more, YouTube started freezing up about once per minute. I tried everything I could think of, but nothing helped. I thought the problem must be with my TV. I’d given up hope and decided it was a TV problem, and then the next day the news came out about the throttling. My Internet provider is Rostelecom. Until today, I could get around the problem by connecting my TV to my mobile Internet, but now even that doesn’t help. It’s dead; it doesn’t load at all, even with the lowest resolution. I usually watch videos at 1080p. So far, everything seems to be working fine on my smartphone.

How are you bypassing the block?

Vladimir

I’ve installed a paid VPN service on my smartphone. When it’s on, everything works perfectly. On my desktop computer, I use the tool GoodbyeDPI (there’s an analogous service for Mac called SpoofDPI) — it makes everything work just as well as it did before, as if the slowdown never happened.

Vasya

I already had a VPN for watching Netflix (HideMy.name), and it mostly solves the [YouTube] problem. Sure, high-resolution videos load more slowly, and we’ve gotten used to watching YouTube with no ads, but I get moral satisfaction from the fact that the content creators I watch will now at least be getting ad money from my views.

And, well, overall, for my wife and I, this is just one more reason to move [out of Russia] as soon as possible. Russia will surely be a good place eventually, probably even without our lifetimes, but in the foreseeable future, things might get significantly worse before they get better.

Alexey, Moscow

I simply found a way to install RedShield VPN (which has been removed from the App Store) and paid for it. Now I don’t have problems with blocks at all. I’ve long known about GoodbyeDPI. It worked for me, but I rarely watch YouTube on my desktop computer, so I bought a VPN.

Mike, Siberia

Right now, I watch [YouTube] through my server abroad. For this, I use a Socks5 proxy (only for YouTube and not, for instance, for Meduza), since encrypted methods, like Shadowsocks-22 or Vless Reality, can’t handle the maximum bandwidth.

Pavel, St. Petersburg

I’m using [the proxy service] Orbot on my Android devices and Tor on my regular desktop computer.

Ruslan, St. Petersburg

I’ve tried to watch [YouTube] through a VPN, but in the end, with a heavy heart, I’ve had to start watching videos on [Russian social media service] VKontakte. Those bastards have forced all the decent bloggers to move there.

Kirill

One word: a VPN. And not just any VPN, but my own personal one. Basically, I rented a virtual machine for a month that’s located outside of Russia (in the Netherlands, in my case) and installed [the open-source encryption protocol] OpenVPN there. Then I installed the OpenVPN GUI [graphical user interface] on my PC and connected to the virtual machine’s network. This way, I have my own personal VPN that’s almost impossible to detect and block.

More translations forthcoming.